WRITTEN QUESTION E-0720/02 by Erik Meijer (GUE/NGL) to the Commission. Losses during long-distance electricity transmission and distribution and financial instruments to deter such losses.
Date: 2002-03-15
Institutions: European Parliament, Provisional data
Subjects: electrical energy, electricity supply, energy grid, energy saving, energy transport, tax harmonisation, trans-European network

C 229 E/126

Official Journal of the European Communities

EN

26.9.2002

The Commission assists Romania and monitors its progress towards fulfilling the conditions for accession.
Respect of the principle of legal certainty is one of the fundamental aspects of the rule of law. The
Commission has closely followed the recent developments concerning the extension of the rights of the
General Prosecutor to introduce extraordinary annulment actions. The Commission has expressed its
concerns in the latest Regular Report and in direct dialogue with the Romanian authorities, that these
extended rights risk undermining the principle of legal certainty.

The concerns of the Commission should be seen in view of the jurisprudence of the European Court of
Human Rights. This Court found in its judgement of 28 October 1999 in the case Brumarescu v.
Romania (1), that the right the Romanian General Prosecutor had until the law was changed in 1997 to
challenge final judgements without any time-limit, constituted a breach of the principle of legal certainty.
The Court found also that this breach implied an infringement of the right to a fair court hearing which is
guaranteed under Article 6 § 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights. A time-limit of six months
was introduced in the Romanian legislation in 1997. The time-limit was extended through the latest
amendments to one year, the power of the General Prosecutor to introduce extraordinary annulment
actions became more discretionary and included also cases which were not finally decided in the normal
procedure.

The Commission will continue to follow the developments in this field with special attention to how the
discretionary power of the General Prosecutor is used. However, the Commission has no competence to
intervene directly in the dispute the Honourable Member is referring to. Individual judicial redress for the
alleged breach of the principle of legal certainty can only be sought within the Romanian judicial system
and, when all domestic remedies have been exhausted, at the European Court of Human Rights. The
Honourable Member has also suggested that the court proceedings in question have been unmotivated
lengthy. If this is the case, it can in itself constitute a breach of human rights.

(1) No 28342/95 ECHR 1999-VII.

(2002/C 229 E/143)

WRITTEN QUESTION E-0720/02

by Erik Meijer (GUE/NGL) to the Commission

(15 March 2002)

Subject: Losses during long-distance electricity transmission and distribution and financial instruments to

deter such losses

Is the Commission aware that

1.
transmission, which increase with increasing transmission distance,
transformers also produces losses and that consequently,
Netherlands, which import as much lower-cost electricity as possible from France and Germany,
5 billion kWh each year, or 5 % of total domestic energy consumption?

there are considerable losses during long-distance electricity
that any voltage conversion in
for example, energy distributors in the
lose

Does the Commission think it desirable to limit such transmission losses, with a view to optimising
impact of electricity generation and the available quantity of

2.
the balance between the environmental
electricity?

Does the Commission see scope for limiting electricity losses through better matching of power
the

3.
station locations and locations of energy-intensive businesses and by improving the quality of
electricity grid?

4.
Does the Commission see scope through electricity transmission pricing ? at present, the same rate
applies to both short and long distances ? to limit distance and thus deter the emergence of predictable
transmission losses?

26.9.2002

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Official Journal of the European Communities

C 229 E/127

Does the Commission view the possibility, advocated by the Dutch research institute Nyfer, of
5.
extending the present regulatory energy tax, or ecotax,
levied on small-scale electricity consumers to
transmission operators and distributors which waste energy as a practicable way of deterring transmission
losses?

6. What scope does the Commission see to encourage the Member States, under the present directive,
to adapt their taxation system and rates for electricity transmission?

7. What other specific initiatives is the Commission taking to further limit transmission losses within
electricity distribution?

Source: ‘De Stem’ newspaper, 21.2.2002

Answer given by Mrs de Palacio on behalf of the Commission

(25 April 2002)

The Commission is aware that

1.
distribution.

losses are an inevitable part of electricity transmission and

2.
The Commission thinks it is desirable to limit transmission losses. It is primarily for national
transmission and distribution system operators to take appropriate measures to reduce losses, within the
regulatory framework set by national legislation and national regulatory authorities. Furthermore, in the
context of the European Electricity Regulatory Forum, concrete progress is being achieved in ensuring that
a European tariff system for cross-border transactions provides for costs from electricity transmission,
including losses, are reflected accurately and imposed on those causing these costs.

3.
The amount of losses can be reduced by improving the quality of the electricity grid and, according
to the information available to the Commission, a substantial part of the network investments of national
transmission operators is targeted at reducing losses. An improved match between power generation and
consumption could also contribute to a reduction of losses.

4.
As mentioned above, a reduction of losses can be encouraged by providing locational signals through
network access tariffs, thereby discouraging the establishment of new generation or consumption at
for a
locations where network losses would be particularly high. The Commission,
Regulation on conditions for access to the network for cross-border exchanges in electricity (1), has
suggested in Article 4 with regard to national access charges that ‘where appropriate, the level of the tariffs
applied to generators and/or consumers shall provide locational signals, and take into account the amount
of network losses and congestion caused.’

in its proposal

5.
The Commission believes that all possibilities to reduce losses should be constructively considered
and the Commission encourages all efforts in this respect. As long as there is no Community framework
for energy taxation in place, energy taxation is a matter of subsidiarity provided that the general rules of
the EC Treaty, such as those on state aid, are respected.

6.
The electricity directive does not contain rules on electricity taxation. The Commission proposed a
Community framework for energy taxation in 1997, which has, however, not yet been adopted by the
Council.

7.
In the Communication of European energy infrastructure a number of actions are proposed in order
to increase the efficiency of the use of the existing energy infrastructure (2). Furthermore, under the
European research framework programmes there are also many projects about reducing transmission and
distribution losses.

(1) OJ C 240 E, 28.8.2001.
(2) COM(2001) 775 final.